Costa Cruise Concerns

When and email dropped into my box advertising a 5 day cruise around the Med, including flights and food for £199, I couldn’t resist the offer and booked it immediately.  Claire was initially pleased with me until I started to read out some of the reviews about our cruise ship, “Costa Pacifica”.  The first two reviews I read out were entitled, “Hell on High Water”, and “Costa--Never again”.

The Costa Pacifica was built in 2009 as the sister ship of the infamous, ill fated, “Costa Concordia”.  All seemed well until, on 11th December 2012, while docking at the port of Marceille (where we embark from), the Pacifica hit a pier that caused a 26 foot gash along the side of the cruiser.  No passengers or crew were harmed but it caused an 8 hour delay while they welded steel plates over the damaged area.

This ship is unique in the cruise industry as music follows you everywhere you go.  The music is composed and rearranged by Director Mauro Pagani and you will get a different rhythm in every environment of the ship including corridors.  The 29 music tracks that will accompany you throughout your cruise, “are available on a double CD you can purchase on the ship as a souvenir to dance, dream and remember the most beautiful times you spent on board.”

There are seven restaurants, two of which you have to pay extra but, according to the reviews, don’t seem to improve the quality of the food or service.  Also according to the reviews, the drinks are the most expensive they ever paid on cruises, hotels or anywhere, but they do an all inclusive drinks package for €29 each per day.  This might be the answer, but according to people that took this in the reviews, you are treated like a second class citizen and as if you are invisible when trying to refill your glass compared with paying guests.  I feel its time to smuggle spirits onboard in our flight bag and wine in very large drinks bottles at each port.

The other down side it that its a smoking cruise, with dedicated smoking bars, casino’s and nightclubs and the smoke seems to permeate throughout the rest of the ship.  It seems that because they are cheap they attract the most unpleasant of continental guests that do not adhere to the rules.  The staff also ignore these rules, preferring to stand around talking rather than provide any service.  Kids defecating in the unsupervised pools and spa’s, and hyperactive kids charging around everywhere you go.

They do have an F1 simulator and a glass roofed theatre and have a cinema and library so we may be able to get away from it all a little.  Most days we will spend walking around our destinations anyway but we could always use this break as a relaxing one reading in our room and balcony.  According to the reviews, the rooms are very spacious and clean for a cruise ship and we also paid extra to get a balcony room.  Our price included an upgrade from an internal room to an outside room with a porthole, but it was only £20 extra to upgrade from an outside room to have a balcony so it was a no brainer.  Almost all the balcony rooms are along the sides of the ship (134) but we have one of the 8 along the rear of the ship, on each deck.  Not sure if this is a good or bad thing yet, but they do look about 2 or 3 times bigger than the side ones.  We should get a reasonable view as we are on deck 7 of 14 decks.  Also it should be an easier escape from the balcony from the sloping rear in the likely event of an emergency.  Having had a fantastic cruise on the Queen Mary II where we got married, 5 years ago, it appears that we are now about to embark on the opposite end of the cruise scale for our 5th wedding anniversary.  But Claire and I always like to try the extremes of experience.  When we travel we usually try to stay in both cheap and expensive places to get more of a realistic overview, so in the words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”.

Oh, by the way, I booked an All Inclusive to Corfu for next month yesterday.  Something to look forward to before we come back (or even get there).